Feeding- A Day In Our Life...

We thought you all might like to see how feedings work for Joshua with the NG tube. We do this after we've attempted to give him milk in a bottle first. Here is the pump, bag, and tubing as it looks hanging from the pole.




A close up of the pump. It is very small, but makes very loud beeps!




Here is a close up of Joshua with his NG tube. You can see the yellow end with two caps. We use this for his tube feedings, as well as for giving his medicines.




To start the feed, we pour the milk into the bag, turn on the machine, and start to prime it. This means that we stand there and hold the "prime" button until milk fills the entire length of the tube, from the bag to the red end of the tubing. Once that is done, we need to check placement.




These are the tools of the trade: the stethoscope and the syringe. To test placement with the stethoscope, the round end is placed on Joshua's belly and the syringe filled with about 1mL of air is attached into the yellow end of the NG tube. When pushed, you should hear a "swoosh" sound in his belly.




Method #2 of checking placement: using the syringe, we have to pull up on it to see if any stomach contents come back up. When we see that, that is an indication that the tube is in the right spot. Now, we're ready to attach the primed tubing to the NG tube.




Here, the tube is primed full of milk and is now attached to the end of Joshua's NG tube, ready to go.




Here is Joshua in his crib with the feeding bag and tube working. The pump can be adjusted to take as long or short as you want for the amount of milk to go through the tube and into the baby. Right now, it takes him about 30 mins. to finish 50mL of milk, which is a little over 1.5 ounces. This is not counting the 30-40 mins. it takes for us to get about 20-30mL into him beforehand...So, one feeding can take 1 hour- 1.5 hours! When it is done, the pump will beep until it is paused or shut off and will say "NO FOOD".




After the remainder of the milk has been primed into Joshua, we take the red end of the tubing off and have to flush the line. This means we take up about 1mL of water into the syringe, attach the syringe to the yellow end of his NG tube, and push the water into him, flushing down any remaining bits of milk so that he gets all of his nutrition. The yellow end must then be recapped to prevent any germs, etc, from getting down to his stomach.





We then hook the tubing over the faucet in our bathroom, fill the bag with warm water, and prime it again. We first send the water through, which pushes the little bits of leftover milk/formula out and cleans it. Then, we dump out any water left in the bag, and prime it again, tipping the bag to the side, which sends air through and fully cleans out the tubing. Rinse and repeat 6-7 times a day!